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Old 28th March 2018, 11:48 AM
MarkH MarkH is offline
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Default Farmers Reducer or Benzotriazole?

I’m on a steep learning curve here and I’m rather proud I’m even asking this question as I’m talking about chemicals I hadn’t even heard of 12 months ago. I bought a job lot of paper off eBay, 500 sheets for £10, which so far has been a good buy for me to practice with then throw away. Out of the entire pile there’s one box of Ilford Grade 2 that is slightly grey in the whites. I have seen a video by Peter Elgar who suggests using Farmers Reducer with care can heighten my highlights and especially my whites. I’ve also seen a comment from GoodOldNorm who suggests if your paper that has fogged using a 20ml dilution of 1gm of Benzotriazole to 1ltr of developer could possibly bring your paper back in the development stage. To me these two gentleman are giants in the world of analogue photography and I don’t want to be partisan in any way as I have massive respect for both. But am I right in thinking try GoodOldNorm's method first, then if that doesn’t work use Peter Elgar's method post printing?
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Old 28th March 2018, 12:05 PM
alexmuir alexmuir is offline
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Benzotriazole treatment is the recognised approach to paper that has an overall fog, usually due to age. Farmers tends to be for a more selective approach to brighten specific areas of the print, so I would agree with your conclusion and try Benzotriazole first.
Alex


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Old 28th March 2018, 12:17 PM
MarkH MarkH is offline
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Thank you Alex, I thought that might be the case.
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Old 6th April 2018, 11:40 AM
JOReynolds JOReynolds is offline
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I believe that benzotriazole restrains the activity of the developing agent(s), which reduces the effective speed of the paper as well as reducing fog. Farmer's reducer affects the whole silver image, bleaching equal amounts of silver from both shadows and highlights. But the effect is barely noticeable in the shadows, whereas the effect in highlights is immediately obvious.
Because it straightens out the H&D curve in the highlights, it makes them look 'd------l'. You may not wish to create this.
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Old 6th April 2018, 02:12 PM
Michael Michael is offline
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Jonathan - I was surprised that you thought "diabolical" was a word not to be spelt out here; but then I realised what you actually meant.
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Old 6th April 2018, 02:36 PM
JOReynolds JOReynolds is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael View Post
Jonathan - I was surprised that you thought "diabolical" was a word not to be spelt out here; but then I realised what you actually meant.
Thanks for taking me seriously, Michael
Jonathan
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Old 6th April 2018, 04:15 PM
MarkH MarkH is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JOReynolds View Post
I believe that benzotriazole restrains the activity of the developing agent(s), which reduces the effective speed of the paper as well as reducing fog. Farmer's reducer affects the whole silver image, bleaching equal amounts of silver from both shadows and highlights. But the effect is barely noticeable in the shadows, whereas the effect in highlights is immediately obvious.
Because it straightens out the H&D curve in the highlights, it makes them look 'd------l'. You may not wish to create this.
Thank you for the advice, it is appreciated. I've used the benzotriazole with the paper quite successfully, but I’m only using the paper for practising with.
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Old 6th April 2018, 06:51 PM
JOReynolds JOReynolds is offline
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I should have clarified that benzotriazole and Farmer's are not comparable in their action or application. Benzotriazole is added to the print developer, ferricyanide + hypo is used after processing.
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